Читать книгу Discourse analysis applied to english language teaching in colombian contexts: theory and methods - Wilder Yesid Escobar Alméciga - Страница 10

What is classroom language? Does it differ from conversation? Is it a type of text? Is it a type of discourse? These are four important questions whose answers will provide scientific research with a less distorted view of discourse analysis in relation to classroom language. The expression ‘scientific research’ is as wide-ranging as it is intended to be and is used here comprehensively. As was stated in the introduction, this is due to the evolution discourse analysis has experienced regarding classroom discourse. The difference between classroom language and a conversation could be precisely identified from two properties that here will be called symmetry and level of formality. I will use the following transcript to illustrate these two concepts.

Interlocutor 2	(4-6) […]
Interlocutor 1	(7) Yes. […], they showed you a Pharaoh’s body mummified on
	(8) ‘Blue Peter.’
Interlocutor 2	(9) Did they?
	(10) When was this?
Interlocutor 1	(11) On Monday I think.
Interlocutor 2	(12) Good gracious me, that’s fairly recently.
	(13) Do you remember which one it was?
Interlocutor 1	(14) No, […].
Interlocutor 2	(15) No.
	(16) […]

The transcript could represent two different situations and it could be assumed that I am accepting that both classroom language and a conversation are the same. That’s not my intention and I will provide a context for each situation to amend my initial assumption. First, it could be a small chat between two friends in which one is offering new information about a recent visit he/she has made to a museum. Second, this transcript could be an excerpt on a lesson about history or chemistry on mummified bodies. Symmetry as defined in any dictionary entry implies proportion. Thus, any linguistic interaction is symmetrical if the participants share on an equal basis their turn taking and their right to interrupt with specific purposes such as making new stands, agreeing or verifying if the interlocutor is still involved in the exchange. This example seems to be asymmetrical; interlocutor 1 is sharing a new topic with interlocutor 2 and they organized the interaction by assuming the role either of the questioner or of the answerer. In an ideal conversation, the relationship seems to be more symmetrical. This means that the participants talk or hold the conversation by distributing somewhat evenly their right to speak and express their thoughts. In this example, this does not happen because one of the interlocutors displays longer turns, makes more comments and asks more questions.

Regarding classroom language, this asymmetry is normally accepted, but this does not necessarily imply it should be acceptable that the teacher has a privileged position due to her/his officially assigned role to guide a teaching/ learning process. In that sense, teachers hold the power to distribute turns of speaking, to formally assess what is said, to interrupt, etc. However, neither classroom language nor conversations occur out of context. Filling in the square brackets [purposefully left blank] and adding lines 1-6, and 17 contextualizes the conversation and the interaction becomes the following:

Interlocutor 2	(1) What is the word then for doing/putting this body in its mummy
	(2) case?
Interlocutor 1	(3) Mummify.
Interlocutor 2	(4) [They mummified it that means-yes. They drained out all the
	(5) liquid from the body and rubbed special preserving oils into the
	(6) body, wrapped it in bandages and put it in the case.]
Interlocutor 1	(7) Yes. [Miss], they showed you a Pharaoh’s body mummified on
	(8) ‘Blue Peter.’
Interlocutor 2	(9) Did they?
	(10) When was this?
Interlocutor 1	(11) On Monday I think.
Interlocutor 2	(12) Good gracious me, that’s fairly recently.
	(13) Do you remember which one it was?
Interlocutor 1	(14) No, [Miss].
Interlocutor 2	(15) No.
	(16) [What about you Paul?]
Interlocutor 3	(17) No, Miss.

It is obvious now that interlocutor 2 is a teacher and both interlocutors 1 and 3 are students. Most of the time, the teacher is asking questions (lines 1-2, 10 and 13), which sometimes are also used to call students’ attention to something or to organize turns (line 16). The teacher uses other opportunities to inform her students (lines 4-6) or to assess what students have just said (line 12). On the students’ side, the number of assumed turns seems to be comparatively smaller in this particular excerpt. Lines 7 and 8 appear to be used by the student to add a commentary to what is being stated by the teacher. Lines 11, 14 and 17 are straightforward answers to questions addressed by the teacher. According to this example, taken from Sinclair and Coulthard (1975, p. 85-86), due to particular contexts and to particular participants’ personalities, both classroom language and conversation could be considered asymmetrical.

On the other hand, because of the traditional role imposed on teachers, classroom language most of the time may be more asymmetrical compared to conversations. Cazden (1988), considers the construction of a lesson structure, mainly talks about variation in the speaking rights; as in the example above, she mentions that teachers tend to keep talking more than students do. She implies that there are deviations to the structure because basically classroom talk is context-shaped. However, sometimes regarding its structure, “classroom talk becomes more like informal conversation–not the same as conversation” (Cazden, 1988, p. 55). It should be recalled that the transcript provided was introduced either as a chat between friends or as a history/chemistry class. All these assumptions depend on many variables; for example, according to expected learning outcomes, both teachers and students could play an active role in the construction of classroom interactions. They might or might not negotiate knowledge co-construction according to motivational levels, attention span, and other factors (none of which are considered here).

Level of formality can be an alternative criterion to define a linguistic exchange. The dichotomy formal/non-formal attempts to describe to what extent a situated interaction makes evident who the participants are and how they relate to each other. Again, classroom language could be assumed as spoken in the formal context of education where the teacher structures the exchanges and socializes students through the use of language. Notice how students in the example taken from Sinclair and Coulthard always attached the word Miss to most of their answers (lines 7, 14 and 17). I should also say that the word social here is used in a very wide-ranging way and that it is not my purpose now to discuss its appropriateness in describing educational purposes. Therefore, back to the initial point and, as a generalization, a conversation is typically either a formal or a non-formal co-construction and, this should be judged by the circumstances in which a particular conversation takes place.

However, symmetry and level of formality do not completely trace out what classroom language and conversations are because the last two are always embedded in the expression and construction of social meaning and it is there, in the construction of social meaning, where the level of formality may also vary. This last statement implies a deep epistemological discussion to formally characterize both symmetry and level of formality as part either of the structural or the pragmatic (and even the stylistic) level of classroom discourse and conversation. Although this chapter does not aim at being part of such enquiry, it seems to be appropriate to ask, as Sinclair and Coulthard did, about “how far different educational levels anticipate different types of discourse” (1975, p. 114), and how different kinds of conversation that might or might not share different textual patterns anticipate differences as well. This agrees with Van Dijk’s (1981) idea about what discourse studies should additionally accomplish because, as he stated, “an interactional analysis of discourse will not only be concerned with structural or functional properties of dialogues. It will especially have to indicate what the various social contexts of these structures and functions are. Not any conversation can take place in any context” (Van Dijk, 1981, p. 6).

Two concepts should be additionally explored: text and discourse. The distinction among them is necessary to move towards an understanding of myriad explanations about discourse analysis. According to Fairclough (1995), there is a common understanding for discourse analysis about what a text is; in his own words: “a rather broader conception has become common within discourse analysis, where a text may be either written or spoken discourse” (Fairclough, 1995, p. 4). It could be assumed then that discourse contains texts or rather that discourse is made out of texts. A newspaper, for example, is a written discourse about recent happenings (most of the time) that are texts contributing to the construction of a broader discourse. By the same token, the study of classroom discourse is the study of discourses made out of classroom-generated texts. In that sense, a lesson could be considered a discourse that is constructed by sequential texts structured by the interaction of teachers and students in the classroom. Consequently, classroom discourse is also text-context situated. This is what allows a dialectic interrelationship between the speech producers and their situated discourse. As Fairclough (1995) asserts, language use is “imbricated in social relations and processes which systematically determine variations in the properties of language, including the linguistic forms which appear in texts” (Fairclough, 1995, p. 73).

Although the limits between properties such as symmetry and level of formality and concepts such as text and discourse seem to be blurred, they still help us to understand that classroom language and conversations are not the same, especially when properties and concepts are applied to real pieces of language interaction or when approached by different streams of discourse analysis, as will be shown below. There are also different structural, functional, social and ideological levels in discourse. For example, a teacher might claim to be democratic in his/her classroom; this involves an idea (ideological level) of a specific human being he or she shares and wants to perform his educational practice within such a framework (social level), but his/her discursive actions (functional level) may be proven as contradictory because of the speech acts (structural level) used while teaching. As a consequence, those levels should be seen and examined in light of discourse analysis theory. Such theory might be qualified as critical.

The previous considerations will not be discussed any further due to the descriptive and exploratory purpose that this chapter has at this stage. However, the fact that many things, in Potter’s view (2002), are called discourse analysis constitutes a reference to revisit the investigations made through such an approach. The next section will outline discourse analysis in general educational settings and the feminist post-structuralist approach as part of additional ontology and epistemology behind it.